What Does It Mean If a Coach Doesn't Reply To Your Emails?
When you are in the early phases of your recruitment you will be reaching out to coaches as well as hopefully have some coaches reach out to you.
One of the most anxiety causing scenarios for recruits is when they reach out to a coach and do not receive a response quickly. You’ve done your research on schools that might be a fit and begin emailing coaches to introduce yourself. You send the email and then wait…and wait…and wait. Just to hear nothing back.
This can make your mind start thinking a bit too much about why you are not hearing back at all, but fear not, I am here to tell you about why you may not be hearing back and how you should handle it.
Why You May Not Be Hearing Back From A Coach?
The first reason you may not be hearing back from a coach right away is simply because they do not have time at the moment to respond to your email.
Be aware of the time of year you are sending your introductory email to a coach. If it is in the middle of their season, they may be spending most of their time preparing for practices and upcoming competitions. This means that they may only have a few minutes to respond to emails a day, and if the emails are piling up (which they do) your email may be falling further and further down on the unread list.
This doesn’t mean a coach won’t read it, it just means that it might not be until a week later when they have a chance to get caught up on emails.
The second reason you may not be hearing back from a coach right away is that they quickly read your email and determined from your information that you are not a good fit for their program.
It may seem harsh, but it is how college recruiting works. If a coach looks at your introductory email and watches some video of you, it may be clear to them that you are not the caliber of student-athlete for their program.
This could be because of your athletic skill in comparison to their team, or it could be that you are emailing a coach of a school that you are well below their minimum academic requirements.
If coaches are receiving many emails a day they may not have the time to respond to all of them, so they put their attention into responding to those recruits that they deem a potential fit for their program.
If you are not receiving responses from coaches initially, it is likely because you fall into one of these two categories.
So, how do you know which category you fall into? By sending a follow up email.
Follow Up Emails
Sending a follow up email is something that you need to be doing if you are not receiving a response from a coach initially. It is important to send a follow up email because it will help give you clarification of which of the two categories you fall into.
You should not send a follow up email the next day if you do not hear back, or even two days after.
Give a coach at least one week to respond to your email. That is ample time for a coach to respond as even if they are at the busiest time of their competitive season, their team has one day off from being able to practice and compete. This is when coaches will get caught up on emails if they haven’t had time to respond over the week.
So if you sent an email on September 9th, give a coach until the 16th to respond back. If they don’t respond back by the evening of the 16th, then you should prepare to send a follow up email on the 17th.
This email can simply be taking your original email and adding an extra sentence at the beginning of it.
This sentence should read something similar to this:
“Hi Coach (insert coaches name here),
I wanted to follow up about my introductory email I sent to you on September 9th to see if you had a chance to review it. In case you didn’t, I have added it in this email below. I am very interested in your program and look forward to hearing from you!”
You can make changes to this how you would like but it should be quick and simple.
If the coaches still don’t respond within the next week, it is likely they aren’t interested.
This does not mean all coaches will ignore the email as some coaches will respond politely thanking you for the email but let you know that you are not a fit for their team.
The key is to give them time and hopefully they will responding back to your email with positive interest and then look to move into the next step of their recruiting process.
But no matter what, the key to understand is that if you are not hearing back from coaches right away, do not panic, just give them the proper amount of time to respond and then be sure to follow up if you are not hearing back after a week.